Singing Advice Wanted
Yo, there's enough total nerds on here I may as well throw this out here in the hopes someone will bite. Anyone out there willing to give me advice on singing and get technical? And I mean it when I say technical. Whenever I talk to other people about singing they get freaked out when I go into the differences between head voice, chest voice, falsetto, and all that other mumbo jumbo ... Not that I blame them one bit.
I'm a decent singer but I'd like to get better. I'm also nearly at a four octave range for what that's worth. Still, my biggest hoop is I cannot for the life of me blend head and chest voice. That's a pretty important ability and I can't even begin to understand it.
Other advice is of course appreciated as well, just keep in mind I'm looking for technical-based advice. For some, singing comes to them pretty intuitively; it does not for me. I have to receive pretty specific tips to understand.
Thanks
I'm a decent singer but I'd like to get better. I'm also nearly at a four octave range for what that's worth. Still, my biggest hoop is I cannot for the life of me blend head and chest voice. That's a pretty important ability and I can't even begin to understand it.
Other advice is of course appreciated as well, just keep in mind I'm looking for technical-based advice. For some, singing comes to them pretty intuitively; it does not for me. I have to receive pretty specific tips to understand.
Thanks
2
Comments
While voice is not my major instrument, I did study voice as a minor instrument during college. I had to practice a long time over a few years before I finally began to find what my teacher called "the blend" in my voice. I think the secret has to do with placement.
As you probably know, you can place the focal point of your vocal sound production in various places, ranging from deep in your chest and throat, to up at the very top of your nasal and sinus cavities. Every increment of change in placement causes a change in tone color and quality of the sound you produce. Somewhere in there, there's a "sweet spot" of placement where you can produce the dolce sound of the blended chest and head voices.
When I do it, I feel like I'm getting both the fundamental tones and the harmonics at the same time. It's an interesting sensation, and I like the sound of it the best, since I prefer dolce musical tones to loud, dramatic tones, and I tend to be naturally a high lyric baritone as opposed to a dramatic baritone. My experience with most male singers is that the majority are dramatic baritones.
A good start to finding it is to do vocalises up high, and just use your straight out forte falsetto at first. Then, keep repeating the exercises and gradually lower the volume to piano. As you sing more and more softly, try to start bringing some of your chest voice into the tone.
The blend only works in the top range of where you can sing with your chest voice. There's a natural break in everyone's voice, including female voices, where chest switches to head, and there's a range of about a perfect fifth where you have a choice of using chest, head, or blend. For me, that's from about middle C up to high G on the second line of the treble clef. Sometimes I can stretch that range down to around A or Ab on the top line of the bass clef, and up to around A on the second space of the treble clef.
High Eb or F is the top of my effective chest voice range. I think I sound better using blend on anything higher than D. I only effectively sing high G's and A's in my dreams of being a tenor. That is, I can't effectively sing high G's and A's in real life.
There's no online substitute to having a good voice teacher in your life. Can you sign up for a credit hour of voice instruction at your university music department? You'd also learn a lot of vocal technique if you took a semester of choir. I realize that they are probably not doing the style of music that you are interested in. But, I think a lot of the most successful artists in various styles of popular music did at least some classical voice training to get where they are.
I really like that you are into improving yourself in this way.
One final question - can you really sing over a four octave range? If so, that would be pretty amazing. Four octaves would be from low C below the bass clef up to high C two ledger lines above the treble clef! The coloratura soprano singing The Queen of the Night from Mozart's Magic Flute goes up to high F three ledger lines above. Now I'm imagining you singing the role.
Meanwhile, your low range should sound like this guy's:
Not quite four octaves.
Worth noting:
*I've only hit that highest D once. It's forte falsetto that I do up there, although I'm finding the ability to go real high on piano falsetto as well. I usually crap out above the E, some days I get the Db, and one day I happened to have it all the way up to D, so it's probably BS for me to claim that's "my range" or whatnot but anyway I'm coming clean here so I hope that's cool. :P
*Also the lowest notes could use some work. I've gotten a lot better with them lately, but the lowest one, that is the E (which happens to be an open E on a guitar for what that's worth; rather exciting to me personally) is more of a growl than actually singing, which would only really count in certain types of music. :P
Thus I think it'd overall be more fair to call myself a 3 1/2 octave range. I'm just working hard at the 4 octaves because I think it's physically possible for me.
I'll try to get a video up complete with audio obviously of my vocal range one of these days, Alice.
Thanks for all the information @BelgarathMTH, I'll be referring back to it every so often as I attempt to learn this. I greatly appreciate it!
It sounds best in my own voice from middle C up to F, but I have an unfortunately limited vocal range.
By "effective" range, I do indeed mean the highest tone I can produce in relative comfort with good vocal quality, and for me, that's about Eb two ledger lines above the bass clef. I start to struggle with comfort and vocal quality at high E natural.
I remember the first time my college voice teacher started teaching me about blending head and chest voices. I was struggling to hit a high E in a Schubert art song called "Mein Herz". I had to hit the E during that German "e" sound in "Herz", and I just could not do it despite how long he worked with me to get me to use the blend to hit that note. Finally, he changed the lyric from "Mein He-erz, mein Herz!", with a long note on the extended German "e", to "Mein Herz, O, mein Herz" so I could perform the high E on the more throat-open "O" sound.
I usually hear it used for extended periods more in songs from some kinds of popular music than in classical music. I've listened to some very beautiful ballads sung by guys using acoustic guitars or keyboards and the blended range of their voices.
I don't know if he will ever get the recognition he deserves, but I see this guy as a world class talent. I hope that awareness of him will increase and that he will never lose his amazing range through getting older.
Also, I thank you @Quartz and @God for reminding me why I became a music teacher way back when. I think I had forgotten due to some personal issues related to aging and other matters.
EDIT: Just noticed his shirt colors. Bass earth, tenor air, alto water, soprano fire. Awesome use of the symbology of the alchemical elements as an analogue for the four voices of music! And I thought I was the only person ever to think such a thing.
For training , for example when walking on the street you love , try to tell something by singing without words , just notes. If you don't feel like it , I think it is something called "artist's block" , and you would have to wait for a day feeling more powerful and secure.
Also, @Quartz, I recently found this series of exercises which may be of use to you. I particularly like the descending and ascending scales with the short rests between notes which allow you to pinpoint exactly where the break is occurring (as it's often in a different place depending on which direction you're singing) so you can work on it. *shrugs* Might help
I would add that for male singers, the exercises should be done at the exact printed pitch, not an octave lower as a male singer reading treble clef would normally do.
@Quartz says he can sing that high C, but I would not be able to, so for me, I would transpose those last scale exercises down a bit, probably to the key of G or the key of F.
I'll still continue trying to blend with the aid of my guitar anyhow.
@Elrandir